Vita Brevis
by Luna Stop Swearing
Summary: Relena's in rehab. Heero's a priest. She decides to write a letter to him. Please review!


Vita Brevis  
  
By Mandelarae  
  
Disclaimer: If I owned Gundam Wing, I'd be filthy stinking rich. But I don't, so that's saying something. Title taken from Jostein Gaarder's book with the same name.  
  
Chapter 1: Where Should I Begin?  
  
The girl sauntered to the antique writing desk and smiled slowly. How long had it been since she had written anything on this desk? So many speeches, business letters ago…her favorite haunt, it was. So long ago…  
  
Her hands, long, lithe, nimble, traced the intricate wooden markings on the sides. Sandalwood, the desk.  
  
"No use stalling," she thought, and she finally propped up a chair.  
  
Quietly unscrewing the lid of the inkbottle, and uncapping her fountain pen, she pondered his reaction to the letter upon receiving it.  
  
"Hmm. I hope he's shocked to have heard from me," she mused, traces of a smile spreading rapidly across her features.  
  
Business paper.  
  
"Why are you using business paper, Relena?" her conscience admonished her. "It even has the heading, 'From the desk of Relena Dorlian Peacecraft.' Dammit, this is a personal letter. You can stop being proper and formal for once, ya know?"  
  
Relena nodded to the air, crumpled the unwanted parchment into a ball, and aimed it at the trashcan. After which, she withdrew a blank sheet of stationery. It had roses and other flowers on it. Too personal, Relena decided, and junked that. Then came a pad of yellow paper, simple yellow paper, ruled neatly, with blue-lined margins. Perfect, she breathed.  
  
And in her neat, loopy hand, she wrote:  
  
Dear Heero  
  
"Ick. Too touchy-feely," Relena decided, discarding the defiled parchment, and beginning once more on a fresh sheet.  
  
To Whom It May Concern:  
  
"Definitely…NOT," she announced. That was only the sort of thing you wrote to secretaries and shampoo companies. But NOT to an old friend.  
  
To A Stranger  
  
"That's it," Relena said. "Finally."  
  
And so the letter went:  
  
To A Stranger,  
  
Funny way to address a letter, huh? I didn't know ho to address a letter…to a PRIEST, of all people. It still puzzles me, to this day, Heero, why you freely gave your life up for priesthood when your hands were stained with so much blood from wars past. It is so ironic.  
  
I sit here at the old mahogany desk, still poring over the letter you sent me from the Saint Peter's Basilica. And I still can't believe a word of what you've been writing me, Yuy. Not a word. You're kidding me, aren't you?  
  
Then why, you may ask, am I writing to you? Addressing this letter to Rome, Italy? I myself do not know. Blind fate, perhaps?  
  
Anyway, Heero, I just wanted to say that things are still peaceful; just as you left it in AC 196. I'm still Vice Foreign Minister, although I admit that I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. I plan to hand it over to my daughter-yes, I have one already- Mikage. Mikage Maxwell, if I may say so myself. I will officially retire in a few weeks' time, possibly the exact same time you will be opening this letter and reading it, in your quarters.  
  
Things have changed though. For me, anyway. When you left, I abandoned my role as Vice Foreign Minister…led a wild life. Carefree. Scattered bedmates left and right. I became an alcoholic. I drowned myself in liquor, locking myself in my bedroom. I also learned how to smoke. Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, and Zechs held a meeting and decided that the public did not want to see their nation being governed by a drunken yahoo. So Quatre took over for the meantime. They concocted some lame excuse…said that I had contracted malaria, and had to be sent to India to be quarantined, before I caused an epidemic. What a load of bull.  
  
Everyone else took turns in my room, trying to keep me sober.  
  
But it didn't work. When they would leave, I would just lock myself in again and drink myself to kingdom come.  
  
After a few weeks of practicing this ritual, Sally slapped me. Yes, our Sally Po-Chang herself. And believe you me, it stung like hell. Every time I touch my right cheek, I can still remember the slap. Like white fire. Leaving a huge hand mark on my skin.  
  
I can still remember what happened.  
  
//"You're drunk," Sally stated flatly, her hands on her hips, looking extremely intimidating. But I was too caught up in my bottle of Remy Martin to notice.  
  
"Yep," I replied, then hiccupped loudly. I was having trouble walking, let alone seeing the person in front of me. "So whassa matter?"  
  
"I can't take this any more," she declared, leaning over and landing the most painful slap of my life on my cheek.  
  
"Ow, shit! Goddamit, Sally! Tha's gonna leave a mark!" I exclaimed, putting a hand to my injured appendage.  
  
"Exactly," Sally smirked. "So every time you go to the goddamn bathroom and wash your goddamned face on the goddamned sink, you're gonna regret ever doing this to your life."  
  
And then I passed out in front of her.//  
  
Her words stung like a sonuvabitch. They HURT. Like hell. And they were glued to the innermost core of my brain, pushing me to sober up. Shape up. Resume my leadership.  
  
I was abstaining from doing what I preached. A cruel irony, don't you think so?  
  
But those words urged me to stay sober. And I asked Zechs to throw me into the local rehab center. I had come to the awful conclusion that I couldn't do this alone.  
  
//The lights were dimmed, and my head was still spinning from my recent alcohol intake. But I knew well enough that a figure was sleeping under the covers, silhouetted by the moonlight streaming in through the open bay window.  
  
I fell down in one fateful thud.  
  
The lamp on the bedside table was flicked on, and my brother, clad only in a pair of silk boxer shorts, came running to my aid.  
  
"Lena," he murmured gently, stroking my hair, "What's wrong?"  
  
"You need to take me to rehab, Zechs," I whispered.  
  
Even in the moonlight, I could see my brother's eyes narrow dangerously. "No," he responded shortly. "You are NOT going to rehab. What injustice."  
  
"Big brother, you're definitely one to talk of injustice. When your hands are stained with blood of countless millions of soldiers, who have dedicated their lives to you, when you yourself have drawn swords with others and murdered them in cold blood. You…"  
  
I stopped, suddenly acknowledging the look of anguish on my brother's face when I spoke of his ugly past. His hands, clenched into fists. Eyes, blazing with fury. Hatred. Fear.  
  
"I can talk of injustice," he said in a tone that was fate deciding and unbearably cold, "because I have experienced it. First-hand. I was raised on the streets, unlike you, destined to live a pampered lifestyle. I grew up on the streets, when our parents died. Until the Khushrenada family took me in…trained me to be the indestructible Lightning Count."  
  
His eyes glazed as he looked away from me, but it was evident that he was shedding tears long bolted away behind lock and key. I was shocked; I assumed that he had never revealed his sordid past to anyone…not even to Lucrezia, up until now. To me. His problematic, miserable, alcoholic, 22- year old sister, who didn't know what to do with her life. Or even if she still wanted it.  
  
"Zechs…Milliardo…like it or not, I'm hauling my ass to rehab," I said, slipping out of the door.  
  
He grabbed my arm. And faced me eye-to-eye.  
  
"Don't do anything stupid."  
  
I attempted a small smile. "You know me."  
  
"All too well," he answered, and sighed, landing a kiss on my forehead.  
  
I embraced him. And although he thought he hid them admirably, I could still see the tears flowing down his face,//  
  
So Zechs drove my sorry hide to the St. Gabriel Rehabilitation Institute. Made up a false name for myself. A new identity. Magda Graeson. Bought contacts. And for a whole year, I lived and breathed clean, unpolluted air. Indulged in gum and candy as a substitute to alcohol. Also cigarettes. But not too much, not too often. 12 months, Magda Graeson strove to improve her lifestyle.  
  
//"This isn't the Ritz," the lady whom I assumed to be the one-woman welcome wagon, said in the dull, telephone operator voice. She was wearing the standard blah uniform, pink and white blouse and jacket ensemble. "We carry our own bags here."  
  
I cockily raised my sunglasses over my eyes and peered at the old facility. "Most likely not," I replied. "No revolving doors, air conditioning, or whatnot."  
  
"Miss Smartass now, aren't we?" she asked, unfazed by my behavior. "Everyone who comes here is such an asshole or a bitch." Arching her eyebrow as she looked at me lugging my hippo-sized suitcases, she added, "But they learn."  
  
My phone rang and I answered it.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Then Ms. Congeniality snatched it and pocketed it.  
  
"Hey! Goddamn you! That's my cellphone, for Chrissake!" I yelled, running after her. I was chasing after a 200-pound hippo-woman with my cellphone in high heels, while dragging what seemed like 110 pounds of excruciatingly heavy clothes and other necessities. And I was doing that in vain. When I finally was within a two-mile radius of her, we strayed from the gravel pathway and onto a grassy knoll. And I saw a group of people, holding hands in a circle, chanting.  
  
"It's working, I work it, stay sober!"  
  
I slapped a hand to my forehead and started cursing myself. My mantra was 'I should have never come here, I should have never come here…"  
  
The people had stopped chanting and were all teary-eyed and hugging each other. I noticed that they were all barefoot and were wearing clothes right out of the 60's. I was asking myself why I was not surprised.  
  
Next thing I know, Ms. Congeniality's next to me. "We do chanting here."  
  
"Oh GOD," I told her.//  
  
Rehab is kind of like hell, Heero. Except that in this hellish asylum they feed you and give you rooms. And they make you chant. And they ban cellphones. I'm glad that during my stay there, I had the opportunity to meet a lost friend, Hilde Schbeiker. You DO remember her, right? Duo's appendage? That should refresh your memory, Father.  
  
//Then she led me up a flight of stairs inside the main building and into a room with twin beds. A dark purple-haired girl was reading Stuff magazine and sucking a lollipop and a nicotine inhaler at the same time. She was reading upside down.  
  
"Hilde, this is your roommate," Congeniality said. "Show her the ropes."  
  
The girl, Hilde, nodded slowly, and as the door slammed, she spat out the nicotine inhaler.  
  
"Doesn't the blood go to your head?" I inquired.  
  
"Yes," Hilde answered nonchalantly.  
  
"Then why do it?"  
  
"Coz I feel like it," she grinned.  
  
"I guess that's why everyone's here in this butt-awful place to begin with," I commented, flopping on my bunk bed.  
  
" 'Xacly."  
  
"They're right," I smirked, folding my hands behind my head. "This isn't the Ritz."  
  
"The beds are lumpy," Hilde added. "You're in for boozing?"  
  
I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for reminding me. Yeah. Goddamnit."  
  
"What's your name?" Hilde asked, jumping off the bed and running into the bathrooon.  
  
"Magda. Magda Graeson."  
  
"Wicked name. And I just got Hilde Schbeiker," the German lass moaned. "Your name sounds like something in the espionage business, ya know? Like James Bond, or Cate Archer."  
  
The sound of running water was heard.  
  
Where had I heard that name before? I asked myself. I KNOW her. Then it hit me.  
  
"Um, Hilde, do you know someone named Duo Maxwell?"  
  
Hilde shut off the water and emerged from the bathroom, her clothes from the waist up moist. Her face, hands, and hair were, too.  
  
"Yes," she replied smoothly. "I do. Why? What's it to you?"  
  
Obviously, we were treading on dangerous ground. But I pressed further.  
  
"He's a friend of mine, though I lost touch with him a few months ago. I DO remember writing to my brother, Milliardo, and telling him that he had a new girlfriend…Hilde Schbeiker."  
  
"There are lots of people in the world with the names Hilde and Schbeiker!" she snapped. "And that's not me! It never was. I stopped being THAT Hilde Schbeiker a long time ago." She stared at me. "Let's just drop the subject, okay, RELENA DORLIAN PEACECRAFT?"  
  
As I opened my mouth to speak, she held up a hand and continued. "You think you can hide behind that Magda Graeson façade? That is SO BS! Now excuse me, I have to go to a seminar on alcoholism. I suggest you'd better come, too. They check the rooms."  
  
Getting drunk again sounded like a good idea. 


End file.
